Why I Cut a Guitar IN HALF

most people get a kit guitar to have an easy way to build their first instrument and that makes sense but I had a crazy idea one that ended up taking me to the band saw and cutting this perfectly good guitar in half but for my idea to work this has to happen so I guess there's no turning back but at this point before I can even get excited about the other cool ideas I have for this project I can't help but Wonder did I just screw it up well before we figure out the answer to

that you're probably wondering why I would even do something like this I noticed that whenever my daughter played my guitars she always gravitated toward the lighter ones this guitar is for her so I wanted to remove some of the weight by chambering it but can this be done without compromising the neck pocket pickup cavities or other holes that are already cut in it I had to remove more material with the drum sander to get things flattened out than I had originally planned on and I didn't think this was going to be a problem until I

put the two pieces back together and realized I had an issue to deal with just to see how things were looking I set the top back on but then I realized check that out the Jack hole is not even close to centered on the body and that is not going to do so let me show you what I came up with one of the best things that can happen as a wood hoarder is when that scrap you've been holding on to because it's too too big to throw away even though it's probably too small to

ever be used is when that piece has its moment to get you out of a bind I honestly don't remember what project I built out of popper that was this thick but as I was rumaging through my lumber pile I found it and kind of felt like Charlie when he found that last golden [Music] ticket once this came out of the clamps I needed to get it plain down to size and flatten out the bow in the middle my go-to method for this this is to use some double-sided tape to hold it to a piece

of plywood or MDF and run it through the planer oh and of course say a prayer that it doesn't just get chewed up in the process this MDF backer is helpful for two reasons the first is just to hold the board steady as it's being cut but the second reason is to keep it from flexing under the pressure rollers that feed the board through the planer and sander now this isn't really necessary as much when it goes to the drum sander but since that was already taped down I just went with it and sanded both

sides of the board using this method so now I'm going to get this laminated onto the body and then I'll be ready for the next step once the glue dries I could technically just use a router to flush cut everything once all of the layers are glued back together but since I am the way that I am I cut away the bulk at the band saw first I know that it adds a few minutes to the process and probably doesn't make things significantly easier but it just feels like the right way to do it I

wanted to keep any excess glue out of the electronics and pickup cavities so I thought I was being clever somehow by using this template as a guide for where I needed to apply glue but in hindsight I really don't think it matters and I probably would have gotten this clamped up just a bit faster if I'd simply spread glue across the entire surface and just gone for it and that got me to thinking about how easy it can be to get stuck in your head overanalyze things and just get caught up in perfectionism on the

one hand you can't just be flipping and ignore details but on the other hand you can't spend so much time in the weeds that you never get anything done for instance if I just decided to glue these pieces up and didn't care about evenly spacing out the clamps or making sure to not leave this little guy out how would I live with myself okay so taking a step away from getting overly philosophical it's time to try out something new which is always kind of exciting we're mixing up some two-part silicone to make a mold of

the knobs that came with the guitar kit and what's cool is this cures in about 30 minutes which means I can pop out the original knobs and start casting the custom ones without having to wait too long now I never thought I would be excited about making crystal clear resin projects with pink color shifting glitter mixed in and if my teenage self knew that this would happen one day I'm pretty sure he would disapprove but I guess that's what happens when something like this chameleon color pack shows up in the shop and you see how

excited your daughter gets since I'm casting these knobs out of clear resin and I don't want them to be full of air bubbles I put the molds into a pressure pot so that they can cure for a few hours now even though these turned out pretty cool I'm not quite sure that they're the look we're going for that actually turned out cool yeah that's pretty neat looking so we did a little research and experimenting to get the knobs just right and I'm planning on going into detail in another video soon so if you're interested in

that make sure you're subscribed to the channel so you don't miss it with the glue fully cured on the guitar body I can shift my focus back to that and this is where things start getting interesting but before I can start hollowing out the body I need to clean up the extra material around the edge and for that I grab my router with a flush cutting bit and just go to town and since I'm using a helical bit I don't have to worry so much about following the grain direction to avoid tear out to chamber

this guitar I could have spent some time at the drill press and used a forcer bit to hog out the bulk of the material but I don't have a top bearing router bit that's the right length to use with my template and clean everything up so instead I used a guide bushing in my router's base along with a standard router bit to get the job done I'm curious to hear y'all's thoughts on the debate of weight relieving a guitar and its impact on the instrument's tone obviously with an electric the majority of the tone is

coming from the pickups and some will argue that's all there is to it but the wood still makes an impact for example a strat with an all Maple neck versus one with a rosewood fretboard will have a different voice so how much does chambering an electric actually affect its tone if there was ever a time to make sure a glue up goes well it's right now I'll end up using the pattern in the top of the guitar from the pickup cavities and wire routes as a template for my router bit to follow when I cut

through the layer of popler the clinchy part though is if the holes for the strings or mounting holes in the bridge are off I'll have to fill them in and drill them back out in the right spot so that way everything ends up where it's supposed to be to give myself a fighting chance I'm using the drill bit and punch as locating pins again to help hold everything in place while the glue cures as of cutting this guara in half and promising some custom knobs wasn't enough I've got another surprise in mind from my daughter

with this guitar before I let the cat out of the bag I you need to make some forms for a little epoxy por now I've got a soap boox moment coming up so here's fair warning one of the things that bugs me to no end is picking up a tube of caul thinking that you're ready to go just to find out it's got a wad of dried caulk in the end that you can't clear and that leaves you praying you can find another tube that's not dried out because if you can't that means you've got

to switch gears and work on something else or jump in the truck and head to town for an hour just to buy a $9 tube a C through the this process though I found another way to make these molds that I like a lot better and I shared that in the same video where we talk about making our custom knobs all right so this is a standard Telecaster pit guard but it's kind of boring isn't it so what do you say we mix up some epoxy and make a cool pick guard for your new guitar

can we really do that yeah we can yay all right so first thing we need to do is open up the epoxy so tell me when we get to the eight we'll put in 8 oz of the resin and then we'll put in 8 oz of the hardener and we'll mix it up and we'll add in some colors there you go which one do you want to do first pink or purple pink I think I need some more don't you yeah do you want to pour it in yeah here's what we're going to do we're

going to pour this in we're going to let it just set up for a little while we'll get a heat gun to pop any Bubbles and then as you want to you can take a toothpick and you can put some neat swirly patterns in there okay start from one Edge and move it to the other Edge I think both the colors we mixed up look pretty nice but I'm not sure if it's going to go well with the color scheme we have in mind so while my client was off doing kid stuff I mixed up

another batch of epoxy that was even more pink than the others and I'm already pretty sure I know which one she's going to go for with the guitar body out of clamps for a second time this Telly is starting to come along nicely the next thing for me to do is to remove the excess material around the neck pocket and electronics cavities now the router makes quick work of the majority of this but there's still a bit of hand work to do to get things just right I don't know about you but working with hand

tools is one of those disciplines that I love but constantly wish I was better at I'm just glad that I don't have to r on cutting perfect joints with chisels or saws for a living but regardless there's definitely still a sense of Pride when a handcut aspect of the project comes out just right for those areas where the router bit was a little too big I grabbed my drill and made a series of holes to remove the majority of material before using a couple of different chisels to carve away the rest as much as I'd

love to be able to just plow through this with the router sometimes it's nice to have to slow down and it's it's even more enjoyable when the chisels are still sharp from the last time you used them and you don't have to break out the sharpening Stones first to touch up the edge the fit between the neck and neck pocket is critical and as you can see this one needs some adjustments the fit should be just tight enough to hold the neck and body together but not so tight that you risk splitting the wood I

had some scrap Walnut veneer in the shop so with that and some SE Thea glue I shim the neck pocket with a few pieces and I do my best to keep the veneer flat against the walls of the neck pocket while the glue cures there are a few reasons this joint is so important and the obvious one is simply to keep the neck and alignment with the bridge if the neck pocket is sloppy the neck can shift a little to the left or right even if it's screwed down and throw things off but the other

reason this joint is so important is that a solid neck joint improves the tone and sustain of the instrument but come to think of it there's a third reason and that's really just so you can show off to your other woodworking friends about how nicely you make stuff fit together like oh hey George look at this I can shake around the guitar and it doesn't fall apart all right maybe the cartoon voice wasn't really my best moment but getting back to the build I need to make sure the neck is oriented correctly on the body

so to do this I set a straight edge where the E strings would be located on the bridge and nut and I double check that they follow the taper of the fretboard I also need to make sure that the angle of the neck doesn't need to be adjusted and I do this by checking the gap between the top of the Frets and the bottom of my straight edge since everything looks good now I'm ready to drill the pilot holes for the mounting screws that will hold the neck and body together and since the last thing

I want to do is drill through the fretboard add one of those masking tape Flags we've all come to know and love that tells us just How Deeply to drill it's not really necessary at this point but for my own sanity I go ahead and screw the neck to the body and just confirm that everything's dialed in before moving on and even though these holes in the neck are all pre-drilled I still coat the screws with a little bit of beeswax to make installing them just a touch easier now it's time for everyone's favorite part

of woodworking yep drawing on project can only mean one thing it's time to sand I'll say that right out of the box this guitar needs minimal sanding to get it ready for finish but since I decided to take it to the band saw and do a couple laminations it now needs a touch more attention than it would have otherwise since this is Alder which is pretty soft and Sands quickly I use the 180 grit sleeves here on the drum sander to make it less likely that I'll sand some divots into the side of the guitar

before I start a new grit I Mark the surface I'll be sanding to help me keep track of my progress but once I get past about 320 grip I find this really isn't all that necessary now don't ask me why I didn't clamp up the body in a visce for sanding the edges before I got started because if you did I wouldn't have a good reason for you but it didn't take me long to get tired of the guitar bouncing around before I grabbed a couple clamps to hold it still you know it's amazing how

much faster you can work when your project isn't constantly running away from you if you're wondering about where to get this guitar kit or some of the other items and tools I'm using in the project I have them listed in the description along with a couple of discount codes to save you some money and if you weren't wondering about that well that's fine too I started using this little light a while back to help highlight sanding scratches or dents that may need some attention just about any light will work if you hold it at a

low angle so that the light can spread across the surface but I already had this one in the shop for filming and I find that it's just about perfect for finding those problem areas like this Dent that needs to be ironed out as many times as I've popped dents out of a project you'd think I wouldn't be very impressed by this anymore but there's still just something cool about it to me this is the first time I've worked with alter and while I really like how quickly it Sands I'm learning that in comparison to the

denser Hardwood I usually build with like ash Maple and walnut have to really baby this guitar so that it doesn't pick up any more DSE there are various schools of thought as to how high you should or need to sand wood before finishing the thinking is that if you sand too high then the surface will be too smooth for something like lacquer to adhere to but obviously if you only stopped at 80 grit well that's just going to look awful I found that sanding up to a 320 grit is a good Style shopping point for

a project like this it's still coarse enough for my grain filler to bond well with a bare wood and plenty smooth to build a good finish on top of in the past I've always dreaded the finishing process and while I'm far from wanting to open up a paint shop I'm finding that I'm less intimidated by the prospect of finishing than I once was honestly I think it really just comes down to getting your hands dirty spending the time to try different methods and as tempting as it may be not rushing through all of the prep

work there are two approaches when it comes to applying epoxy as a grain filler one is to use a squeegee to spread out the epoxy it's a little easier to end up with ridges going this route though and that can leave you with a lot of sanding afterward to get a smooth surface but on the upside sometimes you can get away with fewer coats because it's going on a little thicker I've tried the squeegee approach before but I like to use a lint-free rag like a Kim wipe to apply the epoxy instead this allows me

to work it into the surface like a hand rubbed finish and the coats are a bit thinner if you're wondering like I was if I really needed to go through this process well from a grain filling standpoint I'd say the answer is probably no because alter is a closed grain wood but considering that the back of this guitar dented even while it was on a fresh layer of paper I'm going to say that the epoxy coating helping to harden the alter body is only a good thing maybe I should have just hung the body off

the side of my bench like this to begin with but I didn't because as a general rule of thumb I try to keep hanging projects off the side of a bench to a minimum while the first coat of epoxy grain filler cures I turn my focus to the neck which I'm honestly pretty impressed with because out of the box it was about 95% of the way there the Frets on mine were just a little proud of the sides of the neck but that was taken care of quickly with a fret beveling file my only critique

is that the fretboard had a decent bevel on it and by the time the Frets were trimmed flush the string spacing from the pre-slotted nut ended up being a bit closer to the edge of the Frets than I would typically aim for this is a pretty easy fix by just sliding a new nut blank but as a kit guitar for a beginner it'd be nice to not have to do this one thing I was really happy to discover is that I didn't need to level the Frets so I was able to jump right into filing

the ends of the Frets smooth with a couple of different files I'm not going to gush about how awesome these are or about how much time they've saved me but I might leave a link to them below so you can try them out for yourself if you're interested fretwork is one of those things that you've definitely got to get into a Groove with and just work through it's repetitive and methodical but the reward is a guitar that is much more enjoyable to play there were a couple of minor cosmetic imperfections in the neck that I

wanted to address before applying the finish and one thing you can do to make sanding scratches easier to see is to wipe down your project with a little bit of Napa what's nice is that this won't pop the grain like water does which isn't always a bad thing but that it also evaporates quickly and doesn't stink nearly as much as some other solvents traditionally a Telly neck is finished with laer and while that's nice it's just not what I lean toward personally I love the feel of a neck that's either oiled or waxed so for

this one I'm going with Rubio monote and since I really don't want the maple neck to take on an Amber Hue I'm using their corn silk color if you're new to this finish it's one that's definitely worth checking out it dries quickly is Silky Smooth once cured and can be buffed out to a low luster which I personally think looks great at some point in this project I'll get over what a shock it is to my system to be building a kit guitar since up to this point I've only ever built an entire guitar from

start to finish being able to just go from one step to the next so quickly is completely foreign to me but it's still pretty fun with all of the tuners installed and snugged up I make sure they're in line with one another using a little straight edge and then I Mark the center of each hole for the screws with an all since these screws are so small I definitely need to pre-drill so that way I don't run the risk of them snapping as I run them in and just like before I've got my little blue

flag waving at me so I don't go too deep and add a little unwanted character to the front of the headstock I can't even remember where I got this block of beeswax but it's been floating around the shop for at least the past 15 years and somehow I haven't lost it yet got to say that's pretty impressive I ended up having to glob a bit of epoxy in two spots thanks to some more dents I didn't so I'm going to show you a cool trick I picked up from my buddies Chris and Matt from Driftwood

guitars to scrape the epoxy down using a razor blade by wrapping a bit of tape around the ends you now have a bearing surface for the blade to slide on so that you can evenly remove the excess epoxy without going too deep or even worse digging into the surrounding area this works better than a sanding block even though it seems way more risky because regardless of how careful you are you'll almost ably end up sanding the area around the bumped up epoxy as well and create a divot or completely sand through it before I start

sanding the guitar I check it over to see if there are any other areas that need a little extra attention unless I want to do another round of epoxy this is my last chance to have a perfectly smooth surface as the foundation for my finish and since I'm going for a high gloss look I need this epoxy layer to be dead flat since since the epoxy went down fairly smooth I'm able to start sanding at 220 grit and work my way up to 400 once the surface has a consistent matte Sheen without any shiny spots

I know it's level and I'm done sanding Well for now at least the dust Left Behind from sanding epoxy or any finish for that matter is usually really clingy got a stage five Clinger and the best way I found to clean it up is with a blast from the air hose and wiping it down with a tack cloth and now at long last I'm ready to mount this onto my finishing stand and start slinging some paint even though I still consider myself a novice when it comes to finishing there are a few things I've started

doing that make the process a bit smoother one thing is to test out the spray pattern from my gun on a scrap of cardboard or paper before I start spraying the project and yeah I learned that one the hard way in between coats I give the piece a quick once over and I'll sand away any imperfections or runs if I see them by knocking these defects down every few coats My Level sanding later on will go way faster and the last tip I'll share for now is to have good lighting it's really tough to get

good results if you can't see your project so in that vein I head outside to mix up the color for this guitar I find that mixing colors outside gives me much better results than trying to mix them in the shop so once I find the right shade I.E the one that's been approved by my client I mix up enough for the color coats I'll be spraying next there are a few different versions of the color tone lacquer that's do mat carries but the one I'm using is the modern clear gloss and I didn't mention it

earlier but the first few coats of finish I applied are a vinyl sealer this arrives clear but I tinted it white because the pink lacquer I'm shooting is such a light color that I didn't want the brown Hues from the wood to potentially shift it after four or five color coats I level sand a lacquer and then I shoot a handful of clear coats to top things off at this point the Finish needs to cure for about 2 weeks before I can buff it out and yeah that does seem like an eternity so while the

Finish was curing I got back to work on the knobs and know you're not crazy these aren't the ones I showed you earlier and they're not even the ones we ended up putting on the guitar you'll just have to stick around until the end because they came out pretty awesome since this knob is solid I need to drill out the center so it'll fit onto the volume and tone controls but I also need to hollow out the bottom a little bit so that it'll sit closer to the surface of the guitar before I did this

I was nervous that the Chuck was going to Mar the knob but this resin cured so hard that I couldn't even find a single scratch another element of this project with a long cure time is the epoxy I'm using for the pit guards technically I can pop these pores out of the mold in about a day without too much issue but the epoxy won't be near as hard as if I let it cure for a week or so and since these pieces are going to end up being pretty thin that's exactly what I did to

make planing everything down a little less likely to end in catastrophe I taped them to a backer board similar to what I did with the guitar's top I'm going to be honest I've run epoxy through the planer before but it's never been a solid sheet like this and I really didn't know what to expect there were a few areas that chipped out on the trailing edge of the sheets but for the most part it ran through the planer and drum sander without any issue but to turn these hazy sheets of plastic into something worth looking

at there's a lot of sanding ahead of me I sand up to 400 grit with my electric sander before switching over to wet sanding up to 2,000 grit this could still be done with the electric sander but I don't have discs that fine for it and by the time I get up to 2,000 grit these pit guards are starting to shine again and it's time to repeat the process on the other side so once that's done I head over to the buffer and I polished the outward facing side up to a nice luster I knock

out a template from the pit guard that came with this guitar kit so I can easily cut my epoxy sheets to size and since the last thing I want is for this tough to get all scratched up I give it a little protective coating before heading over to the router table and flush cutting it once the mounting holes are drilled and counter sunk in the pit guard all that's left to do is peel off the tape and see see how it looks and while this may not be my typical color scheme I've got to say

I'm pretty happy with how everything's coming together even though the finish right off the gun is pretty good there's still work to do to make the surface of this guitar as smooth as glass I used a little bit of Ivory soap and water to lubricate the Sandpaper so that I get a consistent scratch pattern while level sanding the Finish once the surface is dull like this without any shiny Spots I'm ready to work my way up to 2,000 grit and then head over to the buffer buffing is its own art form that takes just the

right amount of pressure polishing compound and finesse to get right if you use too much pressure you can burn completely through the Finish which is easier to do with lacquer than something like a two-part polyurethane finish but if you don't use enough pressure you'll never get that beautiful luster you're going for some tips that I've learned are to keep the guitar moving don't let the buffer catch the top Edge or a cutout and the last thing is that you really need to warm up the Buffs with a scrap piece of wood before loading them up

with buffing compound some people speed up when they get close to the end of a project but I am exactly the opposite especially when the finishing work has already been done and there's still some assembly to do that requires sharp pointy things that would love nothing more than to ruin my day by scratching that freshly buffed finish to this end I lay out a few layers of towels to work on top of and I opt for a screwdriver rather than a drill to run in any screws now you'd think after years of using power tools

I wouldn't be worried about it but I think it has more to do with the fact that I've rarely slipped and gouged something with a screwdriver whereas with a drill if I slip well that's going to leave work for this kit the neck pickup mounts to the body rather than the pck guard and the mounting holes for the bridge aren't drilled to their final depth which if I had realized I would have drill those out before spraying the Finish not really a big deal just something I would do differently next time if you've ever heard

an electric guitar that hums really bad unless you're touching the strings it's likely a grounding issue and that's what this wire under the bridge helps to minimize amongst a few other things sometimes this wire can be a bit tricky to get to stay in place but if you put a bit of a crimp in it and then hold your mouth just right it will usually stay in place long enough for you to get the bridge screwed down if you're hesitant about soldering this kit makes it really easy because there are only five joints that have

to be made two on the selector switch one on the back of the tone knob and two on the jack my daughter really wanted to screw the electronics cover on so in an effort to save her from heartbreak if the screwdriver slipped I bundled up the guitar top and blankets like it was snowing with a 20° wind chill thankfully there weren't any boo boos but even better it's not snowing in my shop would which would be problematic on a whole another level once I line up the pit guard I need to drill for the mounting

holes and secure it with a handful of screws before I move on to swapping out these standard knobs for the custom ones my daughter and I made from Clear resin the color shifting glitter that we were able to suspend in the middle of the knobs turned out really nice and honestly I think it's her favorite part of the entire guitar [Applause] how you enjoying this guitar kiddo it's really awesome it turned out nice this little amp though that that's just not going to do what do you think about us making you your own tubeamp